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Fig. 1: Outliers distribution (red dots) is homogeneous in both versions. The nearest points to the coast are also excluded from statistics.

Since last September, Remote Sensing Systems (REMSS) is producing version 2.0 of the Level 2 and Level 3 Sea Surface Salinity products from SMAP. One year ago, we published in this blog a brief study on the validation of version 1.0 of the 8-day L3 SSS maps provided by REMSS (see Preliminary validation of 8-day SMAP L3 Salinity product V1.0 for more information). Now, in order to assess the improvements of this new version, we present a small comparison between these two versions of the 8-day SSS L3 maps. Part of this study was included in the V2.0 Release Notes document. The validation has been made using as reference field the 7-day global ocean 0.25-degree SSS FOAM product generated by Met Office and distributed by Copernicus.

On January 31st, NASA successfully launched the SMAP satellite onboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. The satellite, designed to collect high resolution soil moisture maps on a global scale every two to three days, will improve the ability to forecast droughts, forest fires and floods, and will help in crop planning and rotation. On February 24th the reflector antenna was successfully deployed and in the following days the first radiometric data have been acquired.

Image: NASA, United Launch Alliance

In order to obtain detailed soil moisture measurements of the entire world, SMAP is placed in a near-polar sun-synchronous orbit, allowing the observatory to use Earth’s natural spin to maximize the area that can be scanned by the satellite’s instruments. The orbiter will use its L-band radar and L-band radiometer to scan the top 2 inches (5 cm) of our planet’s soil with a resolution of around 31 miles (50 km).